Windows help needed

[Seacoast]

She has so much on her machine now that its
almost out of the question to wipe the drive and start
over.

In addition to the other suggestions, I would suggest defragmenting the drive. In my experience, nasty things can happen when you run low on disc space in Windows including corrupted files. The Windows defragmenter likes to see at least 16% free space which also seems to about where trouble begins. However, defragment will usually work with less free space available. You just have to run it more than once. If you can't free up more than, say, 10% even after several passes, it's time for a larger drive.

You can also run chkdsk /f to clean up some stuff. It's sure a lot faster than backing up and restoring the darned thing.

HB

[Waccoon]

I'll stay away from MS bashing here and give you some tips...

Overall, I'd recommend taking the computer to a local shop and ask them to look at it.  Backing up and wiping the system clean is standard practice for Windows, unless you REALLY know what you're doing.

Backing up your My Documents folder and e-mail should be a top priority.  To find out where your e-mail is located, boot up Outlook Express and go to Tools->Options->Maintenance->Store Folder.  Note the location of the folder, then shut down OE and backup all the DBX files you find.  If you need to restore after a re-install, create a new Outlook Express identity FIRST, find out where the store folder is located, shut down OE, then copy your e-mail backup into the store folder.  The messages should show up the next time you boot OE.  The Import/Export features on the File menu are preferred, but doesn't always work (don't be surprised -- Thunderbird isn't much better in terms of importing and exporting).

My biggest beef with Win98 is that if it crashes, your hard drive can get corrupted, and scandisk won't always fix it.  I had a problem once where the drive was corrupt, and emptying the Recycle Bin trashed half the drive!  Many weird problems are not spyware but "natural" deterioration of the drive.  Upgrading to XP and the new NTFS filesystem will make your drive very resilient to data loss, since NTFS has many, many fault-tolerance features designed to protect the filesystem from both OS and application problems.

If going to XP, I'd recommend a hard drive and memory upgrade.  You don't really need more CPU power, as XP is only slow if you have lots of 3rd party software that loads at bootup.

2. Use Mozilla Firefox as your default browser. My god, i cant start to tell you how much crap get into your computer by using internet explorer and the like.

If you have ActiveX enabled by default in IE, you'll get bugged by spam but you shouldn't get viruses and the like.  Still, Firefox is very, very good replacement these days, if you can tolerate the random crashes.

Using broadband i woulkd recommend a hardware firewall.

A broadband router with a firewall is a MUST for any home with more than one computer.  Raw DSL and Cable is spam waiting to happen.

In addition to the other suggestions, I would suggest defragmenting the drive.

Yes, but you should invest in a real defrag solution.  The defragger for Win98 demands complete defragmentation (no padding between files), which can actually make your system slower in practice.  That's why Be never came with a defragmenter -- it was built into the filesystem and automaticly padded files.  An old copy of diskeeper is cool, but you're better off upgrading to XP and a new, super-fast hard drive.

[melott]

Another question here.......

Does all of these prgs. need to be in the register??
She has a screen full of icons and I think all of them
are being loaded on boot-up, It takes about 5 minutes
for everything to boot. The drive just keeps chattering
away for about 5 minutes ( all these prgs. loading??).
Many of these prgs. are only run seldomly. Can they
be taken out of the register and still be run from the
icon when she wants??

[Damion]

Hi melott,

A couple of things:

Hit Ctrl+Alt+Del, and have a look at some of the programs running in tandem with Windows.

Our goal is to minimize that.

Close that window, Click on "Start", "Run", then type:

msconfig

Press enter, and on the tab labelled "General" (the first tab), make sure that "Selective Startup"
is ticked.

Then, click on the tab labelled "Startup".

Here, you will see tasks that Windows loads at startup, including your Wife's
programs.

Uncheck anything you DO NOT want to load at startup. Things like "systray.exe", "taskmon.exe",
and "rundll32.exe..." should be left checked. To be sure of an item, you can punch it's filename into
google or a website like liutilities.com, and find out whether it's safe/unsafe/necessary or not.  

Save your changes, reboot the system, hit Ctrl+Alt+Del again, and have a look. You can start
"whittling" away at all unnecessary processes, and Windows will begin to load and operate much nicer.

My suggestion, would be to create a new folder on your desktop, and have either you (or your Wife)
create shortcuts to all of her programs, and put them in the new folder.

BUT, before all of this, run SpyBot, RegCleaner (start RegCleaner, go to "Tools", then "Registry Tools",
and click on "Do them All") and the TrendMicro 'online' virus scanner (clear all browser caches before
running the virus scanner). After you're done getting rid of unnecessary startup items, run RegCleaner
again (this will also give you the option of cleaning up the mess in your "msconfig/startup items" list).

Personally, I do not run any anti-virus software (like Norton/McAffee) with 98. I use the above tools,
mozilla firefox, and fire up the occasional "online" virus scanner. I have no problems with this method,
in fact, my Win98SE install was actually a completely crashed, virus-ridden mess salvaged from a friend's
"dead" PC, and subsequently "relocated" to another computer. I've NEVER had to completely reinstall any
OS, although there are cases where it's necessary. YMMV.

The above is really only the tip of the iceberg, but if you're patient and have the desire you can get Windows
running _very_ stable and responsive. Here is a great site full of information on cleaning up and optimizing
your 98 install.

About switching to XP...if you like 98, and it works for you, there's really no reason to change. I like 98,
but as soon as I can afford it and have time I'm installing 2000 or XP. It's probably something to consider doing, eventually.

-edit- Oh...and make sure to backup your data:-P



 

[melott]

@ -D-

Thanks .. some good info there........
I guess I'm going to have to learn to live with Win98 :-)
I've got her machine cleaned-up to where it runs fairly
well. The site you mentioned looks good.. have to browse
it for awhile.

[jjans]

As for SpyBot and AdAware: get both, as I regularily find crap that one misses getting caught by the other!

For Anitvirus get AVG from Grisoft (free!) or you can buy a 2 year license for les than the commercial Norton/McAfee ones...

For Firewall try Sygate (also free!).

For email/spam try Presurium Frontgate MX, also for free, and it cuts spam down after about a week to 10 days!

JV 16 is good for cleaning registries as well.

[DonnyEMU]

One of the most nasty things I caught while surfing was VX2.. I had to reformat one machine because of it. I finally found an ad-aware add-on that's free that gets rid of it.. VX2 is also known as betterinternet

[smerf]

Hi,

OK this is going to be tough,

The first thing to do is call up windows explorer, put it in the list category so that you can see all the dates of when she last used all of her programs, get a sheet of paper and come up with a cut date to decide on which programs she uses a lot and write those in the keep column, then look at all the other programs and list those in the cut department, these are the programs that she has on her computer that she really hasn't used in quite a long time.

Then type in the computer

Format c:\

and blame the rest on me because you followed my directions.

smerf :lol:

[GadgetMaster]

The advice about running MSCONFIG to streamline the startup is good.

For adaware visit:

www.lavasoft.de

and get spybot from:

http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/


If you have access to Partiton Magic then divide the drive into two partitions. One for the OS and one for DATA. Move over all personal data to the second (data partition) and format the OS partition (Drive C:) and re install the OS for the best results.

Oh yeah! Don't forget to install Mozilla Firefox 1.0 as the browser and Mozilla ThunderBird as the E-mail client.